


Reunion

by somnolentblue



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Community: spn_bitesized, Future Fic, Heaven, Multi, Roadhouse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-22
Updated: 2011-07-22
Packaged: 2017-10-21 15:45:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/226858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somnolentblue/pseuds/somnolentblue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jo had been in Heaven longer than she had been on Earth when Sam and Dean wandered into the Roadhouse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reunion

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [spn-bitesized](http://spn-bitesized.dreamwidth.org) in response to [jena](http://jena.dreamwidth.org)'s prompt. Many thanks to [scintilla10](http://scintilla10.dreamwidth.org) for beta reading. Concrit is welcomed, and feedback is love.

Jo had been in Heaven longer than she had been on Earth when Sam and Dean wandered into the Roadhouse. She couldn't say that she was surprised that their bitching came through the door before they did.

"Dude, I don't care if the explosion was kick ass spectacular, I fucking missed it!"

She made sure all glassware was off the counter, either in the sink or put away. There had been more than enough broken glass in their lives after that little rendezvous in... well, wherever it had been, the one with the chupacabras. That had been a fun night, but the shattered hotel vase had been a bitch to clean up the next morning, especially with Sam's snores reverberating through her poor hungover head.

"Dean, be reasonable. I didn't exactly _want_ to see the fire that kicked your bucket."

She gave the little fridge under the counter a kick. Down below it had always held their personal stash, the German beers her mom liked and her own Irish Cream, but sometimes it needed a bit of a nudge. In the afterlife, somehow this meant that it always had whatever someone really wanted, but it needed a familiar re-set between supplying different tastes. She was sort of curious to see what it would produce for the boys – it would serve Dean right if he ended up with the butterscotch schnapps he always swore was for Sammy's sensitive tastebuds.

"It's not my fault that your pansy ass was straggling behind."

They strode through the screen door, Dean ahead, Sam behind, and then automatically stepping back into sync. Damn, but they looked good. She'd guess they were in their early twenties again. Sam was solid but not straining the seams of his t-shirt, and Dean had the scars she remembered from before his first death.

"Sorry, jackass, I'll remember to die faster next time. Would that make you happy?"

She leaned onto the bar, angled to let Dean get a good look if he was still so inclined. She had no idea what had happened to them since she left – the Winchesters had done their best to lay low after the first Apocalypse, so the bits and pieces she got from most people weren't terribly helpful – and she wasn't entirely sure how he'd leap. Either way, it was good to see them.

Okay, she also won the bet with Ash about them actually dying in a final sort of way and then breaking out of their bubble, but that was just a bonus. Look, it was boring traipsing about the afterworld, and there were precious few games that could actually be played – usually the dice and the cards and the balls just sort of aligned themselves as you wanted them and that made for some mighty dull times.

"No, what would make me happy would have been not missing the Fourth of July Fireworks Spectacular at Kat's place. You do know that she was going to make brisket with Bobby's secret sauce, right? Why'd you let me take a job on the 2nd, anyway?"

"Like I let you do anything, dumbass. You're the one who decided that we absolutely had to take care of that nest before heading to South Dakota. I played no role in the decision making process."

"Guys!" Jo broke in, annoyed with their bickering and feeling pissed – hurt – pissed (and how stupid was that, they were always going to see each other first, forever and always) that they were ignoring her. "Did you want something in particular, or are you just taking up perfectly good air?"

Dean took a good look at her chest (and then Sam socked him in the gut, and then Dean elbowed him back, and then she raised her eyebrow and they stopped scuffling). "Hey, sweetheart," Dean said casually. He waggled his eyebrows, and she stifled a laugh at his antics.

Jo straightened and put her hands on her hips. "Hey, sweetheart? It's been decades, and you say _hey, sweetheart_?"

Sam laughed, and Dean grinned. Then he hopped up on the bar, swung his legs over, and slid down on her side.

"I _love_ being young again," he crowed, grabbing her hips and pulling her to him.

Sam didn't bother saying anything, but ten to one she would see him rolling eyes eyes and settling down on a stool if she looked over. Yup, there was the scrape of stool on floor.

She slid her hands into Dean's back pockets – had to do something with them, after all – and gave him the standard Roadhouse greeting. "You break it, you clean it up, Harvelles only behind the bar, and just because you're dead doesn't mean that we can't kill you if you get out of line. Also, the jukebox is for staff use only."

Dean looked down at her and utterly failed to replicate Sam's earnest look. "That's it, rules and threats? No welcome home kiss?"

She raised her eyebrow. "You think you deserve one for that little performance?"

"I'm hurt that you don't recognize my innate awesome," he said.

"More like you're hurt that she's not taken in by your bullshit," Sam said.

Dean's right hand left her hip to give his brother the middle finger. She laughed and then reached up, grabbed his head, and pulled him down for his kiss. Dean bypassed tentative and went straight to thorough, and she grinned when they broke apart.

"Now get your ass on the other side of that bar," she said.

"Yeah yeah," he said, but he went – the long way around this time. She snapped his ass with a towel as soon as he stepped away, and she enjoyed the view of him rubbing it. Then she leaned over the bar and gave Sam his own welcome home kiss, hard and sweet and totally worth the edge of the counter digging into her gut.

"Hey," she said. She was pretty sure her grin had gotten ridiculous, but she didn't really care. It had been so damned long since she'd seen them, and their last encounter had sucked so damned bad.

"Hey, Jo," Sam said, smiling at her softly.

She reached down into the fridge and pulled out two longnecks, popping the tops off and sliding them to the Winchesters. They knocked them back, and she slid them two more.

"Damn, that's good," Dean said. "Sammy here dumped us in some lake, just the two of us and a fuckload of water, freezing our balls off. No beer, no babes, no car, no music – Heaven my ass." He reached up and smacked the back of Sam's head. If the smack was more of a pet, Jo wasn't going to say a damn thing about it.

"Uh huh," she said, grabbing a cutting board, a knife, and some limes. They never actually ran out of lime wedges, just like the jukebox never actually needed quarters and the booze never actually needed to be stocked, but that was no reason to get sloppy and stop attending to prep work. Besides, she liked the feel of a knife in her hands. "You didn't have anything to do with that at all."

"Not a damn thing," he protested.

"So," Sam said, cutting through Dean's innocent act, "how've you been, Jo? How are things, you know, here?"

She shrugged. "You know how it goes – die like a big-ass hero, end up in Heaven, discover that repeating your past gets really freakin' boring, break the system, and then end up right back where you started."

Sam winced, and she shook off her melancholy. "Ash made the Roadhouse the hub when he hacked this place, and we take turns keeping an eye out for newbies, 'cause they get confused when they're suddenly some place they've never been. I'm on shift until someone else wanders in to take over."

"Can we convince you to play hooky?" Dean asked.

"Nope," she said. "Although if you want to stick around for a while, we can grab some fireworks later if you're so upset at missing them."

"Hear that, Sammy? She knows how to treat a guy."

Sam chuckled, low and dirty. "I know how to treat you," he said, and Dean elbowed him.

She mentally ran through the people she knew that they might have known, too. "Bobby's tinkering in his junkyard again, he'd be easy to visit if you want to see him. Madelyn's learning to press olive oil, Isaac and Tamara just re-united and have declared themselves on a honeymoon, Ash is updating the software that keeps this place running, Adine's mapping out some of the connections, and our moms are out doing something with Pamela."

Dean set his bottle down. "Mom's here?"

"Dad?" Sam asked softly.

"Yeah, she's here. But, Dean, you can't go find her," she said as he started to stand up. He tightened his jaw and glared, but she didn't cave – she couldn't have, even if she'd wanted to, which she didn't because that would be dumb. "The system is huge, and the connections aren't all linear. Ash calls it the Matrix, and he tries to make sure that everyone who jumps their place immediately dumps to here so that none of us are wandering aimlessly any more, but you can't follow people if you don't know exactly where they are. We don't know where they are, so you're going to have to stay put or wait for her to catch up with you."

She put her hand on his clenched fist, and Sam leaned against his shoulder. He shrugged, like it didn't matter because god forbid the great Dean Winchester show feeling – and this, boys and girls, was why she let Sam deal with his bullshit (and him deal with Sam's) and just kept the benefits part of their relationship – and picked up his beer again. "Dad?" he asked, echoing Sam's earlier question.

"Sorry," she said, "haven't seen him."

"'Course not," Dean said. "Man didn't dedicate his life to fighting demons or anything."

"It doesn't work like that," she said sharply. "Not everyone comes here. If he's happy where he is he's not going to budge. Most people stay in their own little heavens forever. We're the freaks, the restless ones. Hunters, usually, though not always."

"We know he's not in Hell, so he's got to be here and happy, Dean. Just let it go," Sam said soothingly.

"Fucking Memorex," Dean muttered and took a swig of his beer.

She picked up her knife and started chopping limes again. Fucking Winchesters, trust the pair of them to bring down a perfectly happy day.

"You want some help with that?" Sam asked.

"Nah, it's fine," she said. "Finish your beer."

"So," Dean said, false cheer shining, "what did you say about fireworks since Gigantor made me miss my last fireworks on earth?"

"They obviously weren't your last fireworks," Sam said, sliding back into the argument like they'd never left it, "given that you were dead. Ergo, the previous fireworks were, in fact, your last fireworks on earth; the fireworks on the Fourth were the fireworks _after_ your last fireworks on earth."

"Bitch bitch bitch," Dean said. "They should have been my last fireworks on earth. I'm sure their magnificence was magnificent-y, and you made me miss them. Really, there are not enough blowjobs in the world to make up for that – seeing fireworks isn't literal."

Jo snorted. "Really? 'Cause that's not what I remember you saying last time we were all together. Do the words _oh_ , _Jo_ , _Sammy_ , and _stars_ ring any bells?"

"Oh, fuck off. You can't take what a man says in bed seriously." He glared at her and took another swig of his beer.

She grinned. "You mean you don't have a purple dinosaur name Mr. Wiggles?"

Dean sputtered, beer going everywhere, and she grabbed a towel from the counter and tossed it as his face. She laughed, and Sam smirked at his brother.

"Sure we can't talk you into playing hooky?" Sam asked. "If you don't want to do fireworks, we could go back to the lake."

"Sam, we are not freezing our balls off in the lake, and Jo's not freezing her tits off, either. They're too nice and perky for that ice bath."

"I can cut off your beer supply," she reminded him. "No objectifying my tits."

"It was a compliment!" he protested.

"Uh huh." She considered them both, pretending to contemplate their offer. Really, she was reciting the alphabet three times, but they didn't needed to know that. "Anyway, I think I could be persuaded. What's on the table?"

They looked at each other, and she watched them communicate in blinks, eyebrows, and quirked lips. She leaned against the bar and waited, relaxed by the comfortable rhythm of their interactions. They turned back to her, and Dean spoke. "One hour, you're the dealer," he said.

"Four hours, dealer's choice all the way," she returned.

"Darlin', we'd love to, but a man's got limits."

She shook her head. "Good try, but no. Four hours, dealer's choice. There are two of you and only one of me, and we're in Heaven. You don't need to worry about downtime."

Dean glanced at Sam before replying. "Fine," he said. "Your call all the way, but Sam gets one trump card of his choosing."

She considered them. That wasn't part of the original offer, and if she gave way this time they'd get that trump card every time. On the other hand, Sam never used his trumps for himself, and he usually got her and Dean so strung out and coming so hard that she couldn't remember her own name.

"Fair enough," she said. "Let me leave a note, tell whoever comes in where we'll be."

"Where will we be?" Sam asked.

"Mustang Island, the night of July 4. It was originally Mom's, actually, so it'll be nice and deserted for us."

"How does that work?" Sam asked.

Jo jotted a note on a convenient coaster and put in the defunct till. "Ash works the equations; I don't worry about it," she said, pulling pulling a six-pack of Corona out from under the bar and putting some lime wedges in a ziplock. "Something about constructs and perception. Every unique place has an sigil – you'll have to learn them if you want to move around on purpose instead of stumbling about."

"Sam, shut up," Dean said. "We're getting fireworks. We're going to be at the mercy of a hot babe. Call it a win and quite worrying about it – we can figure out the mechanics later." He picked up the Corona and shoved it at Sam. "Here, do something useful instead of asking questions."

Sam took the beer with one hand and smacked him with the other. Dean grabbed his hand, but Jo tossed the limes in his direction to distract him before they could start scuffling or making out. They'd be the ones cleaning up the dropped beer, but she didn't see any reason to delay their exit.

She joined them on the other side of the bar, repeating Dean's trick of going over it instead of around with a wink and a smirk. Dean wolf-whistled, and Sam laughed. She sketched a sigil on the door, took their free hands, and led them out into the clear night sky.


End file.
